I have been working on an old school Java-based RPG now for a year, and thought it was finally at a point where it might be good to let people have a crack at it. It is known to run on Linux, Mac and Windows.

It is called Fabula Divina (www.fabuladivina.com), and it draws on inspiration from old games like Ultima, Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, but also some of the newer aspects of RPGs like Diablo, Torchlight. My aim was to keep it as old school as possible.

It is still kinda rough, but you can play through the first "act" completely, at which point it opens up into the whole world. Hope you enjoy it. If there is anyone who has good constructive feedback that would help make it better please let me know. If you are interested enough on the project you might want to work on it, please let me know. More eyes are better than just mine. :-)

I thought maybe you had stumbled onto a bug I have tons of issues reproducing...

That something that happens so rarely, I haven't been able to reproduce it enough to fix it. For some reason the display thread seems to hang, but only ever at the beginning on startup. It happens like once out of every 200-300 launches for me, so I can't nail it down.

I've had one test player report it and when he relaunches it, it plays fine.

If anyone has any idea what causes this, I'd love to have an assist. I've played the game for hours at a time, and noticed once it starts, it won't happen at all.

To start with I appreciate the feedback and patience. I've never made a game before. This has always been a dream of mine.

I am surprised it is laggy on an i5 MBP. I am developing it on a nearly 4 year old Core 2 Duo MBP 13". I could be biased, but it doesn't feel laggy for me. I'd love to know if powersave mode is what is doing it for you.

I will work on the game .svn stuff. I didn't think it was being capture into the production zip file.

The way I do sound management started out as a proof of concept. I can reduce the number of instances that spin up on startup. That will help that.

I am using typical java awt to do the 2D graphics. If there is a faster way to blit the graphics, please let me know. I wanted to do everything from scratch, which means it's all a work of progress, incl the engine.

Any way anyone can help to make this game better, more fun, +++ in any way is definitely welcome.you can email us directly at fabula.divina@me.com or contact us on Facebook/Twitter/Google+ also...

Right, so I gave it another short test. It doesn't seem to lack when my mbp is plugged in. However, it feels like the guy is really slow at moving, because of the initial time it takes from pressing a key until he moves. Also, no diagonal movement?

Another thing, seems like you're rendering a little too few tiles. When I'm moving to the sides there sometimes appear a black edge underneath the jagged edges around the map.

That is bizzar. The only time I have slow keyboard input is during the introduction. Once in the game it acts perfectly. I have not heard of anyone else having sluggish input response times inside the game.

You said you were on an i5? Which version of OS X is it?

We have the same video card, so I tend to not think it is that. Can you tell me what the CPU usage looks like for the FabulaDivina process?

If you get some time, can you write me a direct email, and maybe we can do some troubleshooting over Skype or Google+ or FaceBook chat?You can reach me at Graham.Norville@gmail.com or Graham.Norville@me.com, I also have a Facebook account GrahamNorville...

I found a visualization perf issue that was chewing up some CPU. I put a byte cache in there to buffer it, and it took my CPU usage down from a maximum of 80% down to a maximum of 54% hanging out on average to 34-48%...

I like stack traces... They make me happy. I can look in code for stack trace issues. Thanks for this. Thanks for continuing to help me out.

As far as Skype, I had Skype under a private email address. My hope was you would have written me an email, and I would have given you my Skype username. My Skype username is jcannonb. You can find me on Skype with jcannonb.

I added those two email addresses to the Skype account though, and you can find me now.

I do intentionally slow down the game loop. To simulate an old school feel, and reduce CPU utilization. I put a Thread.Sleep(60) at the bottom of the render loop. That may be causing your issue too. If I raise it up to Thread.Sleep(30) that would give you 30fps...

Since the game isn't "intense" on animations I didn't think it would matter to players, but maybe it will. :-)

I tried to cast a spell in combat, while having no spells. (I'm actually not sure how to even win combat. Every time I've tried with just normal attacking I think I end up dying, since it returns to the start screen. )

CLASSES- Players asked for classes and we have responded. Classes work differently here than in some games. With classes, we do not restrict what you can use, but rather, your efficiency if you go off book. So for example, you can put a big katana in the hands of a Cleric, but they will not be nearly as effective with it.

Road Signs - These help you find your way.

Angelus, the Guardian Angel. Now, when you press ‘H’, you can talk to your guardian angel and he will help you.

The hero will now talk to you and give you feedback. He/She does not have nearly all the text in there that he/she will have, but there is a decent amount to start with.

Popup-text bubbles will show up in some places now to help give more active feedback to the world.

Many, many bug fixes

Performance fixes that should make it run faster for you.

Versioned data. This should be the last time you have to start your character over.

Massive modification to the RPG-based rules. We are trying to start balancing the world that is there.

It has been a while since I posted on this thread. I wanted to give an update.

We are very excited about the changes inside Fabula Divina.

The perspective changed from flat overhead to isometric.The game has been ported over to Slick2D. The OpenGL has bought us acceleration with OpenGL, special effects awesomeness, a 50+% drop in CPU, 75% drop in the size of the images we need to distribute and load with the game. Antialiased fonts on every platform in a very predictable way.The possibility of porting to Android one day.

The features are almost finished programming in, and then we can get back to programming a story. We have found a writer who has taken our concept and is writing the story, so it should be pretty fun in the end.

We hope to have an isometric playtest available in the next couple of months.